Origins
The history of the As I Was Going to St Ives riddle began around 1730, but differs from the modern version with nine wives instead of seven. The more modern version of the song has seven instead of nine wives and was created in around 1825.
St. Ives is located in multiple places throughout the world, but the song itself is said to refer to St. Ives located in Cornwall in Europe, when it was a busy port for fishing because they had a lot of cats there to chase off and eat the rats that were being a menace and destroying fishing equipment in the area. While the St. Ives in Cornwall is believed to be the location that the song refers to, there are other people that tend to think that the song refers to St. Ives located in Cambridgeshire because it used to be an old market town which also makes a lot of sense as well. Either location could very well be the exact spot that the song refers to.
Variations Used
The song has been used in many different ways across the world. The song itself has even been used in popular culture with television such as anime shows like L/R in a different manner of how the song is played out, but still the same song in meaning nonetheless. The song has even been parodied in print with Mad Magazine as well. The song has also been referenced in the film Die Hard 3 as well as parodied in poetry.
What Is The Meaning Of The Song?
The song itself is to be played as a game between the singer and the listener. The song is a guessing game for the listeners of the song. The lyrics to the song go “As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, Each wife had seven sacks, Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits, Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were there going to St. Ives?” The answer to this question of the song is zero, but any variations on the answer lies in the possible different meanings and interpretations of the song.
Answers Are Widely Varying
Many people get the answer to this question wrong all the time across the world. They tend to get the answer to the question wrong based on assumptions while listening to the song. They don’t carefully consider each possible option that the song could be referring to, for instance, many people assume that the riddle in itself is of a man, but in reality the song is that the narrator could be cats, wives or the man. The whole point of the riddle is to trick people to make them overthink the possible answers. To this day, it’s fun trying to figure the true answer to this riddle!